Entries Tagged 'Wannabe chef' ↓

Feijoas are coming into season and they’re currently at Moore Wilson’s for $8.95 per kg – if you’re like me and grew up in a country town on a quarter acre section with a feijoa hedge running down the drive you’ll have memories of many feijoa-based activities and dishes from your childhood … cringing as you bit the top off to squeeze the pulp into your mouth after picking up a sun-warmed one from the grass by the hedge, eating so many until you got a tummy ache; Sunday night feijoa crumble; cutting and scooping them into jars in the garage with a bit of sugar and water and getting Mother to buy the delicious preserve for 50c; crawling around under the hedge picking them all up, rotten ones and all so Father could mow the lawn.

All this means it feels so wrong to pay $8.95 per kg for them but I guess these city folk have missed out! One quick hint to Father last week and hopefully for about the same price paid to the courier a 5kg box arrived to work over night – YAAYYYY!

There’s a huge bowl of them in the kitchen plus some in the fridge to slow down ripening for later and the house smells of feijoas. We’ve made feijoa crumble already. I’ve had success with friands in the past (and when looking back noticed the price jump of a dollar per year!)

Today I took my belief that ‘feijoas are a suitable substitute for bananas’ to a new level – they’ll be alright made into muffins won’t they? … errr … maybe a bit runny …

The answer is yes! Good texture, not too sour (given that they’re much tarter than bananas) and tastes of feijoa – roll on afternoon tea time!

Easter weekend rapidly approaches and so does Jam Off 2011 featuring The Mister’s latest batch of jam against Mrs Jam Off plus a whole lot of other competitors in an open competition – attracted so much attention last year it’s gone public!

The Mister & Mrs Jam-Off were in the paper a couple of weeks ago promoting the event.

“I don’t want to make elitist jams, I’d rather make them for the people.”

Details:

• Saturday 23rd April 2011
• Part of Craft 2.0 at the Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt
• Craft 2.0 runs from 10.00am – 3.00pm
• Jam Off starts at 2.00pm with the announcement of finalists in Jam Off 2011 after a private short-listing session with the judges
• There’s a head to head judged competition between The Mister’s and Mrs Jam-Off’s jams, a judged competition for the finalists and a public vote from all entrants for a People’s Choice Award.

The Jam Off blog has got loads of information on it:

• Read about the judges
• Find out who all the contestants are
• Read some of the blog posts contestants have put forward about what they’re making & other preparatory snippets.

I guess we better get the competition box down from it’s resting place on the top shelf of the pantry and see which jam is going to be submitted …

Mother and Father were are in town this weekend and we wanted to try something different for dinner at home having been out on Thursday night. We were at Nikau for breakfast so decided to have a go at Nikau kedgeree – The Mister snapped a photo on his phone and used it that night as lead chef.

Smelled great & looked like the real thing when it was done. Important to scratch through the spice shoe-box for cardamon and fennel seeds and toast them and crush them up (although years past their expiry date I thought I could detect a depth of flavour in the curry layer of the dish!)

A new family favourite I think – we all had a couple of servings each. Thanks Nikau – we promise to actually buy a tea towel soon!

My Hamilton friend promised me passion fruit from his vine this year if he had a crop with some to spare. Must’ve been a bumper crop because a couple of days ago at work a box turned up with way more than I ever expect he’d send.

And they’re huge!

We had a delicious passion fruit week.

First up just eating them straight up – that’s indulgence nowadays that was unheard of when I was a kid when there were easily enough around to have 2 or 3 whenever you wanted, for free (obviously no idea where Mother got them from or how much they cost but I’m sure it was less than the $20-odd a kg they are these days at Moore Wilson’s).

One of our weekend lunches was a passion fruit smoothie, chokka with passion fruit, not just one each.

We checked when we were at Moore Wilson’s and indeed they were $18.95/kg and much smaller.

Then 2 nights of a kind of deconstructed cheese cake, well, passion fruit (lots of them) with cheesecake cream.

YUM. Thanks Hamilton friend

Tonight we had meat and 2 veg – not a very frequent occurrence in this house but it’s potato salad season so we rustled up a steak and some beans to go with it. I have to say I make a very good potato salad (ahem) so I thought I’d share my recipe.

• Half tub plain cottage cheese (the 200/250g tub)
• 2 decent dsp creamy egg mayo
• 2 spring onions
• 6 small potatoes ( just a bit bigger than golf balls)
• Salt & pepper

Cook the potatoes whole, in their skins about an hour before you’re ready to eat – we like the red skinned potatoes but any dug straight from the garden or with a bit of supermarket dirt on them claiming to be ‘new’ will do. Drain and leave on the bench to cool.

Just before you’re ready to eat, make the salad. Finely chop the spring onions and put them in the bowl that you’ll mix the salad in. Chop the potatoes carefully to keep as much skin on the potatoes as possible – it’ll likely tear and pull away but just be patient. I cut the potatoes length-wise then twice across so that each potato ends up in 6 perfectly mouth-sized pieces (well, my mouth).

Make the dressing (I supposed you’d call it). If you’re lucky enough to shop at Moore Wilson’s or somewhere else that does the funky looking ’skinny’ range – get a tub of that cottage cheese. Not for it’s slimming properties (if that’s what the skinny even refers to) but because of it’s excellent texture and taste.

Put half a tub of cottage cheese and 2 generous spoonfuls of egg mayo into a small mixing bowl.

Give it a good stir up with the spoon until it smooths out a bit. It’s at this point I do the smell test – not sure how to explain it but it’s a thing I do with coleslaw dressing as well – take a whiff – I should smell *slightly* more mayo than it does cottage cheese, but you should be able to smell both. Add a decent pinch of rock salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Pour it onto the chopped potatoes and push the spoon right underneath to the spring onions and turn the lot over a few times rather than stirring it so that the potatoes and skins stay fairly well intact and joined – careful not to (as I say to The Mister when he helps me bake) ‘bash it all to bits’!

Eat it straight away, at room temperature. YUM. (Probably serves 3 easily or 2 if you like to go back for more!)

I realise granola is probably not as good for you as mueseli but it’s so tasty and sweet and when living in New York I rather enjoyed it as snack or with a pot of yogurt as a lunch option. I came across this great picture and recipe in the Martha Stewart Living magazine I got for Christmas and thought I would give it a go … when I finally tracked down coconut flakes and a supply of maple syrup at the Beach Road Deli in Paekakariki!

Lined up the ingredients: oil, maple syrup, salt, cinnamon, brown sugar, oats, pecans and coconut flakes

Mixed it all up

Spread it in the baking pan

Baked it in the oven stirring often

Cooled it

Popped it in an air-tight container

And my god it’s YUM. Sweet and biscuity and all kinds of bad! Here’s the recipe on marthastewart.com

Am famous on the Jam Off blog – just re-purposed my holiday jam-making post … you’ve read most of it before but a few extra bits so take a look!

The Mister’s making jam in Awakeri again. He does it every year however, this year he’s fueled by hopes of winning Wellington’s Jam Off 2011 after being pipped at the post by Mrs Jam-off last year … those following my blog for the last year will know about this taste-test that turned into a full blown competition blocking shoppers in the Old Bank Arcade in Wellington with half of Xero and other famous faces like Simon Gault as judge in attendance! This year competition has heated up with an official website, judges lined up already and several other contestants – www.jamoff.co.nz

He’s been experimenting the last couple of days and wanting to experience it all from cane to table we had to accompany him picking yesterday and get to finally meet Monica, the owner of Julian’s Berry Farm in Whakatane who’s supplied the fruit via Mother these last few years.

Off we set with our containers to the tay berry row upon Monica’s advice that they made the best jam, a kind of cross between a loganberry and a boysenberry. Wanting to out-do Mrs Jam-off The Mister didn’t need to be encouraged to try something ’special’. Except the row was picked bare! The 4 of us picked painstaking along the row getting a few here and there until we got half way along and found a bush that everyone else had obviously given up on before getting that far so we managed to get 2 punnets of tay berries. The boysenberries the next row over looked so inviting that we got a couple of punnets of those as well.

We dropped them off with Monica before heading out to the raspberry patch but were dismayed to find out that we hadn’t collected 2 punnets of tay berries at all, they were all boysenberries … seems a couple of rogue self-seeded boysenberries had popped up in that row!

Picking raspberries was really hard work … the canes were really picked over and it took rather a long time in the blazing sun to end up with just 2 punnets and there were so many ants! I was rather hot and sticky and fidgety about having ants in my pants by the time we got back to the car. However, The Mister was proud of his haul, he and Monica discussed recipes and we were sent on our way with a bunch of pamphlets to hand out at Jam Off 2011.

The Mister made his first batch of boysenberry later that afternoon – the freshest jam you can get!

Orange Sister and Father waded in to offer squashing and stirring help for an experimental batch of gooseberry marmalade.

This afternoon he’s into familiar territory using raspberries – this latest concoction has been decided as the winner by Mother already!

Orange Sister has decided she rather liked yesterday’s gooseberry marmalade and tried with a few added extras today – perhaps it’ll be entered into Jam Off 2011 as well!

We haven’t really left Mother with any jars this trip, perhaps we’ll have enough to give some away to friends this year …

Hard to believe we’ve done Thanksgiving Dinner for our urban family 5 times now – it’s always a really long, tiring, often stressful and hot day of standing and cooking but everyone loves it so much and it’s so great having everyone together. Check out the same food and fact that everyone fit around the table that first year …

Yep, we made the same food this year as all other years after a slight period of alarm when we thought we might be faced with a tiny turkey after Moore Wilson’s informed us that due to the Christchurch earthquake we were victims of the Great Turkey Shortage 2010 (because a frozen turkey plant failure after the quake meant frozen stock had to be destroyed and replaced with fresh) and then when the turkey eventually did arrive it was a whopping 7kg-er which was the biggest we’ve had for not the biggest crowd we’ve had! Luckily it fitted in the bag and oven dish and we didn’t get any nasty hell’s kitchen moments due to it needing an extra half hour or so cooking (thanks to the trusty Edmonds cook book and the run-sheets and notes I’ve saved from every year with scribbles and recordings of timings and tidbits (like the purple cabbage panic of last year which thankfully wasn’t an issue this year!))

The menu for 2010:

Thanksgiving Dinner 2010

Spring rolls with citrus dipping sauce

Roast turkey with wild rice & cranberry stuffing
Homemade cranberry sauce
Kumara & orange gratin
Pumpkin, spinach & feta salad
Coleslaw

People seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to attend which was amazing: our Small Dark Friend starved herself all day to make room for turkey, Jiff ironed & wore a shirt with a collar, Lance missed out on going to the kids’ dance recital & new-to-the-urban-family Rocket Scientist & Mrs Jam-Off came from a family funeral. Yes you heard right, that’s Mrs Jam-Off … not so much of an ‘enemy’ after all

A few photos below or take a look at the Thanksgiving10 set on Flickr.

We got ready for the day and foraged and shopped at Moore Wilson’s

We peeled, chopped, cooked, stuffed, rolled, constructed and washed stuff all day

The family gathered and ate (some more than others … Jiff … check out his first helping!)

I love this photo of us all together – this is the reason we do it every year

You’ll recall we made spring rolls at the weekend from a video made by our Twitter friend @TheNoviceChef.

We made a quick video of our finished product to basically wave and say hi to send to her after finally hearing her voice on her spring roll instruction video – over the time we’ve been Twitter friends we’ve seen photos of her, her changing hair colour, her cats (including the sad time when one died), her husband, dog, friends and read about her triumphs in the kitchen and seen lots of wonderful photos of her food. We thought she might get a kick out of hearing our accents and seeing us ‘in the flesh’.

She was stoked and said the video made her week! She wrote a blog about it and her recipe for the day was something involving orange, just for me! Have a read of the post (and some of her others, she tells a great story!) and see the video we made for her: The Novice Chef – Orange Cranberry Cinnamon Rolls.